by Thomas Perry
“If you want to disappear, that’s how it’s done.” She shrugged. “You must have known that when you decided to run.”
He looked at her again, his face less troubled. “When I told you I was innocent, I wasn’t sure why I was saying it. I thought it might be a simple reflex, trying to defend myself from what you had said. But it was for me. You see, time moved too quickly for me. One night I was in New York, having just left a young lady at her apartment and gone to my hotel. The next morning my lawyer was on the phone telling me that I was about to be arrested. After that all I had time to think about was playing my part in this elaborate hoax. But since I got here, I’ve had time.”
“Time for what?”
“Until then I didn’t have time to question what I was being told. The simple statement that Amanda had been murdered—I never examined it. Amanda might very well have come back to the hotel, borrowed my car herself, and accidentally taken an overdose. Maybe it was suicide. Any number of things might have happened. I accepted the assumption that it was murder, and the assumption that being innocent would be irrelevant. But once I had made the first move to run, it was too late. I could only go forward. For a long time I told myself I had done the only prudent thing. Now that I’ve had time to think, I believe it was a mistake. I was too trusting of expert opinions.”
Jane shook her head. “You picked a very bad time to start doing your own thinking.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m just telling you this as one human being to another, so you’ll accept it and go on to something else. I’m no longer a client.” He nodded with finality. “You can tell them that. I’m finished. I’m not paying another dime.”
Jane looked at him thoughtfully. He seemed to be exactly what she had hoped he would be: a victim, who had run out of fear, not guilt. Maybe she had arrived at the right time, after he had already begun to understand the way the business worked. He had been the one to bring up money. Could she get him to understand what he had to do to get out of this mess? Christine Manon had been easy to nudge in the right direction, because she had seen enough to be scared. Vaughn didn’t seem to be scared: he seemed defiant. She had to try. She shrugged and said, “You were too trusting. You’re right.”
He looked puzzled. That wasn’t what he had expected her to say. She had to be careful now, and take him through the logical steps. She asked, “How much have you paid to stay hidden this long?”
He gave a mirthless little snort. “A fortune. I suppose we must be up over a million by now, wouldn’t you say? If I went to Chicago with you, that alone would cost me another hundred thousand or more, and that much to get settled the next time. It never seems to end.”
“No,” Jane agreed. “And it won’t. Do you think that they’ll let you simply say, ‘Thanks, but I’m as safe as I want to be’?”
“They won’t?”
“They killed people to get you where you are.”
He gaped, frowned, then said, “They did? Who?”
She let the amazement she felt show on her face. “Where have you been?”
“Here,” he said. “Right here. Why did they kill anyone?”
“There’s quite a list,” said Jane, “each person for a different reason. But unless you know better, the first one was Amanda.”
“How could that be for me?”
“I didn’t mean it was for your convenience or safety. It was for you—in order to get control of you, to take over your life. After that they killed other people—four of them at the surgical clinic because they knew your new face and could connect it with the old one. That was to protect you, because you were theirs. They need to keep you unencumbered and willing to keep paying until your money is gone.”
His face went through a series of fleeting expressions: skepticism, anger, fear. “You’re saying that if I don’t go to Chicago with you, they’ll kill me too, aren’t you?”
She was silent.
He pressed her. “But suppose I did go? At some point they’ll get every cent I have, every cent I can get. What happens then?”
“I don’t know,” said Jane. “I met a woman client who ran out, and one of them implied to her that she could work off future fees as a prostitute. Maybe it was just a mean thing men say to scare women. Maybe it wasn’t. I would guess that they would weigh the likelihood that you could keep bringing in money against the likelihood that you would be caught and talk to the police.”
His eyes narrowed as though he were in pain. “It’s amazing, when I look back on it. I thought about the way she died, and of course it had occurred to me that it was an intentional setup. But I thought it had to be someone who hated her—after all, I wasn’t the one who was killed. It could be some enemy of hers I knew nothing about. Then I thought it could be someone who hated me, or wanted her and was jealous. But it wasn’t. It was someone who wanted money and knew that if I were made desperate and miserable enough, I could pay and pay.” He stood up. “I’m through.”
Jane said, “Sitting tight and refusing to budge isn’t likely to be your best strategy.”
“I understood your threat,” he said. “You didn’t help me because I was in trouble. You caused the trouble so I would pay you to keep solving it. And now I have no choice but to keep paying.”
Jane took a deep breath and let it out. Now was the time. “That’s the idea, but I think you have a choice.”
“I do,” he agreed. “You can tell them that I’m going to make sure that if anything happens, the police know everything I know.”
“I wouldn’t advise waiting until something happens.”
“Whose side are you on?”
Jane said, “I have my own side. And I’m going to make you an offer. If you want me to, I will risk my life to save yours. I can’t make anything that has already happened go away. I can keep you alive long enough so you can tell your story to cops who will know what you’re talking about, and who might think it answers questions that are on their minds. I can also produce two people who suddenly developed problems just as unlikely as yours and were both offered solutions. That’s the best offer you’re ever going to get, and it won’t come again.”
“If that’s what you wanted to do, why haven’t you already done it?”
“Because I didn’t have the one piece of evidence that turns a couple of suspects’ wild claims into one story that makes perfect sense.” When she looked at him, her gaze was so intense that he wanted to turn away. “I didn’t have you.”
Jane watched him walk past her into the living room. He stood and looked down at the piano, then walked to the pile of books on the antique table near the door. His eyes rose to the gold-rimmed mirror on the wall above them. He said, “This is probably the part that I hate them for most.”
“What is?”
“My face.”
“I got the impression that it was an improvement.”
He kept his eyes on the reflection before him. “It is. I look twenty-five years younger than I looked before. My imperfections are gone. But I look like a different person.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
He sighed. “It sounded like a wonderful idea. I didn’t really understand what it meant. People say that by the age of forty you wear the face you’ve earned. The scars and wrinkles and marks are supposed to be the punishment, and maybe the warning to other people. But the alternative isn’t exactly a fresh start. It’s being fifty-five, looking in the mirror, and seeing a young face that has nothing in it you recognize. You have to study that face, and try to be what he seems to be. If you don’t change, conform to the mask’s contours, then you’ll be discovered. It was a brilliant thing for them to do to me. I can’t walk into a police station and tell my story, because my own face proves I’m a liar. Because I let them do this, they’re safe.” He turned to look at her and smiled, and the smile was winning, confident, and utterly false. In a few seconds, he let the muscles go slack. “I can’t do what you ask.”
Jane urged him. “I think you h
ave very little choice.”
He shook his head. “I can’t tell the police I’m an innocent victim, a person who was duped. I’m a man who escaped from the authorities before they started looking, and then changed my face. How could they believe me?”
“They won’t if you’re alone—if the only story they hear is yours. But I have other stories, other victims.”
“Who?”
“One is Richard Dahlman.”
“Dahlman … the surgeon?”
“After he finished your surgery, all of the people who worked with him and saw your face were killed. Then they did to Dahlman exactly what they did to you. They made him scared, then offered him a way out that made him look guilty.”
“A man like him? It’s …”
“Unbelievable? Alone, neither of you gets anywhere. But together, you’re pretty convincing. His story that the reason his friends all died off was that they helped him perform plastic surgery on a mysterious fugitive looks a bit better if the fugitive shows up. Your story of getting framed for a murder and talked into running looks a bit better if you know they did the same to him.”
“I would be taking an incredible risk.”
“It’s a chance. If you wait until he’s gone, you’ve got nothing. A man who volunteers to tell the police a story sounds better than one who tells it after they catch him.” She paused. “And if you’re killed, your side of the story never gets told.”
He sat down on the edge of the couch and stared into the fireplace. Jane sensed that it was time to let him alone to think, so she moved back into the bedroom and waited. After a long time, she heard movement in the other room, and he appeared in the doorway.
“Before I walk into any police station, I’m going to need something better than a similarity to other people who make more convincing victims,” he said. “I’m going to need proof.”
“What sort of proof?”
He took a deep breath, and she could hear a shivering in it, as though he were afraid even to say it. “Tape recordings. I can get them to come here. If I say the right things, maybe I can get them to admit out loud that I didn’t know anything about any murders—Amanda or the people at the clinic.”
Jane frowned, then paced. “I’ll be honest with you. I don’t like the idea.”
“I can do it.”
“They have no reason to trust a person they’ve harmed. If they hear a wrong tone in your voice, a question they don’t think you ought to be asking, you’re going to die—not later, after they’ve had time to mull it over—right then, right there.”
He said, “I know that. If they killed other people, then I’m no different. You want me to take a risk. All right, I will. But it has to be this one.”
“It’s much bigger.”
“If I can get through five minutes of the right kind of conversation, I win everything. They go to jail, I go free, and I can be myself again. Five minutes of acting. Not five years of telling the same story over and over to hostile cops and judges and juries, and every minute of it being just as vulnerable as I am now. No, more vulnerable, because everyone in the country will have seen this new face.” He gave her a pleading look. “If I turn myself in now, I’ll never get another chance.”
Jane stared past his clear, honest thirty-year-old face and into his eyes. “I hate the idea,” she said.
“I’m not asking your advice,” he said. “I’m going to do this, regardless of what you think.”
Jane held her gaze on his eyes. He was perfectly serious. He was going to try to clear himself, and there was very little she could do to stop him. She couldn’t hope to drag him all the way to Chicago at gunpoint, and even if she could, he wasn’t going to be of much use to Dahlman unless he told his story. “If you have to do it, I’ll try to show you how to do it right.”
39
Marshall walked into the American Airlines waiting area carrying a manila envelope under his arm. Jardine was sitting exactly where the camera had shown him, in front of the row of lockers and between the two rest rooms, at a table where he could watch the gates.
Marshall approached the table, his leather identification folder already open in his hand. He stopped beside Jardine and held it in front of his face. “Hello, Mr. Jardine. John Marshall, F.B.I.”
Jardine’s eyes squinted at the ID, then looked up at Marshall. His eyes were guarded, not quite daring to be hostile, but the brain behind them was already aware that this was not likely to be good news.
Marshall said, “I’d like to talk with you for a few minutes.”
Jardine made his eyes flick from side to side, already convinced that the arrival of the tall man in the dark suit had frightened off some valuable quarry. “This is kind of an awkward place,” he said. “Can we go somewhere away from the gates?”
“If you’d like,” said Marshall. He stepped back and waited while Jardine closed his briefcase and stood up. Marshall stepped off toward the concourse and let Jardine follow.
Marshall entered the cafeteria, sat down at a table, then gave Jardine an inquiring look. Jardine nodded and sat down. He had used the short walk to regain his composure. He leaned back in his seat comfortably, as though he were about to light a cigar and pass the brandy. “What can I do for you?” asked Jardine. He looked into Marshall’s eyes and saw something that dispelled his confidence. His wariness returned. He straightened and sat in his chair with the palms of his hands on the table.
Marshall opened the manila envelope. “You’re probably anxious to get back to what you were doing, so I’ll try to make this quick.” He turned the impenetrable light brown eyes on Jardine. “And I know you’ll help me.”
Marshall set three enlarged photographs on the table and spun them around, one after the other, so they faced Jardine. The pictures were grainy, so Jardine knew they must have been transferred from a videotape. But they were unarguably pictures of him with Jane in Lot C.
In the first, the two were standing beside his car talking. In the second the doors were open. She was seated and he was getting into the car. In the third, Jardine was driving out the gate with her in the passenger seat. Jardine looked up at Marshall.
“Who is she?” asked Marshall.
Jardine feigned a smile while he looked at Marshall and considered his answer. This man wasn’t about to screw around listening to him say he didn’t know. He knew that Jardine knew, and he was sitting here with his palms sweating, just waiting to catch Jardine in a lie. “I don’t know a whole lot about her. The name she gave me is Jane.”
Marshall’s gaze seemed to lose some of its chill. He looked interested. “What was your business with her?”
Jardine felt cheated. It was just like the damned taxes. You owned something as long as the government felt like ignoring the fact that you had it, but you were just taking care of it for them. If they wanted it, they just came to you like this and took it. She was worth money to him. She might be the difference between retiring in a big house with a pool table in the basement and freezing to death in some alley in a cardboard box. He resisted. “Is there a reward for information leading to her apprehension and conviction?”
Marshall shook his head. “Sorry.”
“Is there a bench warrant for her? Bail bondsman involved?”
“No,” said Marshall. “She’s just somebody we’d like to talk to. She might have information about a fugitive we’re looking for.”
“Who is it?”
Jardine detected that Marshall’s patience had been exhausted. The look in his eyes returned. “This is a friendly inquiry. We would like to know why you were meeting with her the other night in Lot C.”
Jardine felt alarm seeping into his veins to speed up his heart and slow his mind. The F.B.I. knew she was a criminal and had pictures to prove he had been with her alone. He stared down at the three photographs. They made it look as though he had met her at the airport and taken her somewhere. That was aiding the escape of a felon. It occurred to him that the appearance was exactly what had h
appened.
But she had been holding a gun on him. Why couldn’t you see it in the pictures? He remembered she had been shielding it with her body when he had approached. Then she had backed up to keep it on him and her body was turned to the side. He had assumed at the time that she just didn’t want a shuttle bus driver to notice, or a passenger starting his car to turn on his headlights and see it. But she had known exactly where the cameras were mounted, and had kept her back to them.
He searched for a way out. The F.B.I. could have his license pulled in a second, but that wasn’t what worried him most. This guy could probably get him held in county jail on suspicion for a couple of days while he dreamed up a charge. Jardine thought about the prospect of being placed in the general population behind the walls on Vignes Street. The population always included a few who knew him professionally. He would never get out alive.
It was a gross injustice. Any kind of cop who got sent up would be put in solitary on a special block where the other prisoners couldn’t get at him. Jardine was just as much a part of the justice system as any of them, but he wouldn’t get special treatment.
He had to survive. “Here’s the way it was,” he said. “I don’t really know her at all. She came off a plane. She looked a little bit like a woman who was wanted in Illinois. If I remember right, it was mail fraud and forgery, but I could be wrong. Anyway, she had that look. It was a slow night, and so I decided to tail her until I could make sure.”
“How?”
“First on foot, then in my car.”
“No,” said Marshall. “How were you going to make sure? If you couldn’t tell by looking at her in a lighted airport, what new information were you going to get?”
“I carry a collection of posters and circulars.” Jardine swung his briefcase onto the table and opened it for Marshall. Clipped to the lid were rows of photographs reproduced on a copying machine. On some pictures, subtleties of skin tone and shading had been left out by the copier, and on others, shadows and textured details like hair had become dark blurs, but Marshall recognized a few of the faces. Richard Dahlman was one. “I thought I’d get really close—maybe talk to her, and see.”